Brad and Angelina's Miraval Rosé
A divorce, a Russian oligarch and decent rosé
If I wrote this one month ago, it would be so topical it’s crazy! But I didn’t :(
Having tried 20 celebrity wines (feel old yet?) during my tenure here, I can place these ventures into two distinct taxonomies: the vintners who are serious about their product (Jon Bon Jovi, Eric Wareheim, Giuliana Rancic) and those who want to get drunk and go on the Kelly Clarkson Show (Nina Dobrev and Julianne Hough, Diane Keaton, Chrissy Metz).
Brad and (formerly, but I’ll get into that) Angelina’s Miraval rosé fits into a new category: that of the celebrity chateau owner. This is a rare class, and one that is the current stage for Brad and Angelina’s (who I am coining “Brangelina,” pls don’t steal that!) ongoing legal battles.
You might have seen coverage recently in which Angelina accused Brad of physically abusing her and her kids on a flight in 2016. The FBI got involved. Well, these details came to light after Brad sued Angelina for selling her share of Miraval to a Russian oligarch. Hello darkness, my old friend!
The basic timeline is this: Brad and Angelina bought the Miraval estate for $60 million in 2011, with Brad putting up 60% and Angelina 40%. But right before their wedding — which was hosted at the property’s 35-room manor house in 2014 — Brad sold 10 percent to Angelina for €1 to make them even owners (I think he might have just needed a bill to do coke with).
Chateau Miraval is an impressive and historic estate, fit for the most famous couple, well, ever. It’s 1000 acres of rolling hills in the Cotes du Provence AOC (albeit not the most prestigious appellation in the area), and is on the list of France’s 500 most important vineyards. People Magazine said Saint Thomas Aquinas, a famous non-Jewish person, stayed there in the 1250s.
Everyone should go read Angelica Jade Bastien’s piece in Vulture from October on the cultural legacy of Brangelina. At the height of their fame, they offered “what all great stars do: a fantasy, as out of reach as it is alluring.” The chateau, then, was their debutante ball; the status symbol that sent them from lascivious tabloid fodder to an echelon fit only, truly, for these heavenly bodies. It’s no wonder the chateau acquisition accompanied their notorious humanitarian efforts.
As Brad told Vogue this year — while promoting his new skincare line made from Miraval grapes that retails for $250 a bottle — the estate “is just steeped in creativity, and it’s so fertile. We make olive oil, truffles, and honey here. Reinforced concrete began here. Reinforced concrete! That’s insane!”
Reinforced concrete is not the Emily In Paris dreamscape Brad thinks it is. But randomly, what he’s saying is true. In the 1840s, Joseph-Louis Lambot lived at Miraval and constructed a boat out of "ciment armé.” I guess creating reinforced concrete was the Thelma and Louise nude scene of 1840?
After purchasing the estate, Brad became very involved with the wine business, teaming up with the Perrin family of winemakers to produce their first vintage in 2013.
Angelina was also there for a lot of it. “It is the place we brought the twins home to, and where we were married over a plaque in my mother’s memory,” she said in a 2021 email to Brad.
Angelina filed for divorce in 2016 after a plane ride during which Pitt allegedly injured Jolie and their children while on a drunken rampage. The broad strokes of that story we knew.
But this specific details came to light in this most recent legal battle, the court documents for which were first provided by Puck. It all started when Brad sued Angelina in June for selling her 50% stake to Tenute del Mondo, the wine arm of Stolichnaya Vodka, owned by the Russian-Latvian oligarch Yuri Shefler.
It says so much about the tarnishing of their collective status that Angelina sold to a Russian billionaire. As the poet Countess Luann once said, “money can’t buy you class.” It is perhaps the nail in the coffin for the fantasy of Brangelina.
Brad felt as though Stoli Group’s acquisition amounted to a “hostile takeover” of the brand and maintains that he and Angelina had an informal agreement that either one would not sell their stake without the other approving it. Plus, Brad says, Angelina never gave him the €1.
But in September of this year, Jolie's one-time company Nouvel sued Pitt for $250 million, saying he “masterminded a so-far-successful plan” to control the winery.
By 2016, per the lawsuit, Angelina witnessed “lots of inconsiderate behavior” and felt excluded from the business end of the winery and “was shaken by the recent imagery that was released to sell the alcohol.”
I cannot find any of the promotional material from that time, but if they were anything like they are now, Brad is certainly is guilt… of being tacky!! :P Miraval’s current marketing scheme hinges on the sizzle reel to end all sizzle reels, with music that sounds strangely exactly like the Stranger Things theme song and a visual style that resembles the Westworld opening. All for a gay ass $24 rosé! I can imagine the ad-men pitching the concept to Brad: there’s going to be ballet dancers, men chiseling wood, DRONE SHOTS!, the 26 year old Wharton grads would say, hooked on Brad’s supply of the white stuff. Then there is the Miraval NFT Brad is currently minting alongside the $300 Champagne-style sparkling wine. Brad obviously thinks NFTs are the future and will probably be giving some to victims of the next natural disaster he gets involved in.
If Brangelina’s purchasing of the vineyard displayed their cultural significance as a couple, the dissolution of the vineyard also holds resonances. Brad is the divorced man working on his house, just, you know, on a much larger scale. Angelina, meanwhile, is showing us the art of beekeeping. It reminds me of the music video for Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi.
But it’s funny that, despite Miraval having such a moment at the center of the divorce of the most famous couple in the world, no one has been all that curious about the wine itself.
But if they were, they might be dumbfounded over all the fuss. It’s a meh bottle of rosè. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se. It’s crisp, it has pretty floral notes, a bit syrupy sweet. In essence, it is every $20 rosè. There is just nothing special about it.
Which is funny, because there is something very special about the chateau, and about its history of owners. The performance of owning the vineyard might be better than the vineyard itself.